My issue was that I could not remove the directory “windows.old” after upgrading to Windows 10.

So, I asked Cortana and got this:Delete your previous version of Windows
One month after you upgrade to Windows 10, your previous version of Windows will be automatically deleted from your PC. However, if you need to free up disk space, and you’re confident that your files and settings are where you want them to be in Windows 10, you can safely delete it yourself. Keep in mind that you’ll be deleting your Windows.old folder, which contains files that give you the option to go back to your previous version of Windows.
Deleting your previous version of Windows can’t be undone.
Go to Start, enter Settings in the search box, and then select Settings.
Select System > Storage > This PC and then scroll down the list and select Temporary files.
Under Previous version of Windows, select Delete previous versions and then select Delete.

Help from Microsoft – Was this helpful?

Not just, “yes,” but heck yeah!!!

Pointing out the difference between Settings and Control Panels seems obvious to me, now. Because of my experience, I’m prone to taking shortcuts with Windows. So, I was thinking that if I was to open the System (settings), why not just click start and type, “system” in the search field – which I did. Then I chose the System control panel and could find no place there that would allow me to get to “storage.” However, if I type “storage” into the search field, I am presented with “Storage, System settings” as the top result. Choosing that puts me on the path to solving the problem, in accordance with the instructions provided by Microsoft.

This weekend, I’m going to craft an email message to send to my desert networking professionals. With that message, I am going to offer some of my time, “for free” – not that I have free time…. What I would like to do is interview anyone who is interested and write an article that I will post on my blog. This article (if I do it right) will have plenty of opportunities for links back to the affected business website.

I’m not clear on the benefit to me for providing this service, but I’m hoping to understand that at some point. Clearly, the original goal here is to see if anyone will actually accept this offer of free service. Perhaps something that is offered at no cost is also perceived to be of no value.

I’ll keep you posted on the results of this experiment. You will, of course, have to come back to my blog, my Facebook page, or follow me on Twitter, or any of the other places I’ll post about this, to keep up with progress. Maybe that is one of the few benefits I will receive by doing this here.

I’ve started the stopwatch and will stop typing at five minutes, so I can add a couple of images to this post. Then, I’ll use HootSuite to push this post out to two Facebook pages, Twitter and Google+, along with another WordPress site I maintain for reasons I’ll explain to the group.

The point of this exercise is to dispel the notion that Social Media takes “too much time!” Sure, you can spend hours scrolling through every post on Facebook, or perusing every Tweet on Twitter. That is up to you, however, as to how you behave as a consumer of Social Media offerings. What is important here is to show that in less than ten minutes, I can produce one post and have it show up in five more places on the web.

Let’s say that you’ve just posted something on Facebook and you want to preserve it for posterity on another website or blog. Here’s what I’m doing here.

After I posted something on my profile page (a.k.a., my personal Facebook page), I shared it, with a couple of complementary links, on my Facebook fan page (a.k.a., my business Facebook page), so my fans could see what I’ve been up to on a Saturday afternoon. Are you with me so far?

Then, on my Facebook fan page, I click the little drop-down menu arrow at the top right of the post. From that menu, I click Embed Post. (You may have to choose “More Options,” to get to “Embed Post.”) Facebook shows the code you need to copy, which links to your post from a web page, Tweet, or wherever it was you were going with this.

Now that I have the code, all I have to do to put it on this page, is paste it into a frame and we should be good to go!

There must be dozens, if not hundreds, of expressions that are misspoken, misinterpreted, misused on a daily basis by the multitudes who post on Social Media. From its to it’s and your to you’re, to could of and should of and the ever popular, “I could care less…” – it’s like, you know what I mean.

I’m reminded of the Q&A joke, where the question is:
“Which is a greater problem today, ignorance or apathy?”
And the answer is:
“I don’t know and I don’t care.”

There are so many wonderful resources today, kindhearted souls, who aspire to help you understand the value of your “social media strategy” and your “engagement” or “conversion rate” – all things designed to drive more business to your door, or at least more traffic to your site. It’s heart warming, really. This outpouring of compassion thinly veils the inevitable sales pitch, or ultimately leads to the idea that you must want this kind of stuff daily in your inbox; it is available via links on Facebook and Twitter. I’m the consumer, your prospect, lost, when you don’t get it quite right.

OK, I’ve lost my way, here.
I was driving at this one point, then, “SQUIRREL!”
Oh, wait, here we go….

I was just starting to enjoy an article posted by one of my favorite sources, when I came upon the expression, “you’ve got another thing coming.” Having a keen (not so fond) memory of the first time I had heard this, I’m pretty sure it was, “you’ve got another THINK coming.”

YES, yes, it IS such a small detail. But, it is one of many. This is how it goes, I suppose. You start down the slippery slope of carelessness, then progress to apathy, which turns into a kind of defensive ignorance (where ignorance is a technique you use to be allow you to keep reading, no matter how difficult you find it to dismiss the myriad errors you find in online reading material.)

If you’ve come this far, thank you. Please do “let me have it,” if you’ve found errors and omissions in my writing, I would love to have that feedback. I promise swift corrections. If you would like to simply commiserate with me, I’ll take that, too.

Very few people will respond. (3 responses, not including my original test of the form)

A subset people who like your Facebook fan page will click the post. (23 out of 101)

Of those who do click, an even smaller (percentage based) subset voluntarily participates, where voluntarily means without being prompted by me. (1 of 23)

The issue:

The poll was, ostensibly, an attempt to determine who cares about grammar. In retrospect, it may just have been one more way for this author to rail about the apparent lack of concern Social Media users and in some cases; writers in general, have about the proper use of grammar, punctuation, and sentence syntax in the things they post online. Given the length of that last sentence, I now experience angst over that very same issue. Did I get it right?

I want to put the writer in a headlock and rub my fist on his hairy head, until he gets the idea that good grammar and proper English usage does matter. That’s my version of senseless violence (question #1 in the poll). “I want to (fill in senseless violent act here) the writer!”

I stop reading after I encounter the first few errors (unless the material is very important to me.)

I empathize with the author, especially if I believe they simply must produce content on a deadline, and I appreciate content they’ve produced in the past. In these cases, I usually point out the error and let them do what they will with my feedback. Most often, I get appreciation as their response.

I notice them and I decide to continue reading, or not, but it’s never, “no big deal.” In fact, refer to response number two. It is a deal breaker, unless the content is important to me.

Finally, here is one last iteration on the fact that the usefulness of the content is the greatest qualifier. Perhaps, “upset” is not the correct word, as more often than not, I feel compassion for my fellow writers.

Lessons learned:

Do some research on opinion polls before you create (your next) one.

Don’t expect a response that provides any meaningful information.

Test the idea of asking for identification and permission to use respondents’ information in posting results.

Sometimes I forget that what I post on Facebook goes immediately onto my Twitter account. Then, I’ll post something useful and someone will start following me. That’s when I realize the power of relevance in a content driven online presence. When I see something useful, sharing it with others seems like such a natural response.

So, I ask you: What have you seen lately that you really think your friends and followers might find useful? Consider your posts and pick the top 10, top five, top two, and show them to me. Give me something useful and I’ll share it with my circles.

Finally, I’m on board with building a list. And, I have chosen SumoMe to help me do this. After years of hearing people say, “The money is in the list”, I’ve decided to go for it. For those of you who like to say, “It’s about time”, yes, I agree.

One of a small business’s best marketing assets is a healthy email list. While proper management and use of your email file will drive revenue immensely, it is often a challenge to create the email list itself.

So, with phrases like, “best marketing assets” and “will drive revenue immensely”, you may have to agree, this is something worth doing. If you agree this may be a challenge for you, call or write!

So, how do we get started? Well, that’s where the big question lies. It depends on what you do, how you do it, and what you plan to share with your subscribers. Yes, it is also driven by which service you use to manage all of this electronic communications traffic.

You may already know some of the big names, like Constant Contact, MailChimp, or Aweber, or maybe even Infusionsoft. They all want to be your provider for email marketing. Each has its features, levels of complexity, and price. How to make that choice is beyond the scope of this article.

I’ve used three of the four (excluding Infusionsoft) in the past and in the present. Currently, I’m focused on MailChimp, for simplicity’s sake.

When I found SumoMe (by way of a successful Real Estate flipping website in San Antonio, where I did some SEO work), it was a pretty easy sale. Instructions on their website are very straightforward (if you know how to manage your website’s content) and it took about five minutes to install and configure the app. Of course, for me, that’s five minutes times a handful of sites, so I spent the first 20 minutes just dropping code into place. Today, I finally delved into some of the advanced features and other cool things you can do with this tool. It all comes down to one goal, which is to get somebody to give up an email address, so you can send them your stuff. For me, that’s going to be a newsletter, with snippets from my blog articles.

In the interest of brevity, I’m going to wrap this up here. But, you know you can always get in touch with me, if you need more help with email campaigns, newsletters, or a cool tool like SumoMe, to help you get more subscribers and build that list!

Sometimes, you just have to click, to see what happens. Don’t do this, if they say it’s FREE! Malware is everywhere… But, sometimes, something is written just right. And, you cannot believe it, so you have to try it.

So it goes with Konami Code. Fully skeptical, I went ahead with instructions from this post on Hootsuite. And, would you believe? If you go to Buzzfeed, as they suggest and “type in the Konami code,” as instructed, you really do land on another page. Holy Good Friday and Easter weekend, Batman!

That little PacMan game at the bottom of my Google maps was kind of an annoyance. I never actually thought about Easter Eggs, until I stumbled upon the Hootsuite article, led there by my exploration of Digg. Yes, I’ve been wandering a bit today. Inspired by a Tweet from Melissa Galt, I dropped into Digg, to see what was cooking, there. So, now you have the full backtrack. As Bernie Mac used to say; “Let’s move on.”

A search for Konami Code leads to konamicodesites.com (where you better have learned the code before you arrive.) You’ll have to type in the code when you get there. “Perform the Konami Code to access this website”, is all you’ll see on the page, until you do! Read the right side of the page. I don’t have an iPhone for testing, so please get back to me with details on that.

“Being friendly pays off”, is the last phrase in this article. It’s always interesting to read well-written articles by astute consultants who work in the field of search marketing. This guy hits it out of the park with his penultimate and final paragraphs. You have to write for people, give them the information they seek, and make it available to them on their mobile devices.

From the moment I heard the term, responsive, mobile-friendly sites became a new paradigm for me. Fortunate we are that there are so many ways to achieve this simple goal. WordPress themes make it easy. Bootstrap makes it easy. Need I go on?

Google makes changes. Some people cringe. People who still practice “the dead art of” SEO shudder. Not me – I’ve been mobile-friendly for some time now. And, I do spend some time checking in with Google’s webmaster tools, to make sure my sites conform with Google’s guidelines for what serves their search engines well. That’s right, I often do take a look at what’s new with Google and I follow some key people who will tell me exactly what I need to know to keep up with those changes. This is as easy as following instructions.

It may be too late to say, “before I sound like I am pontificating here…” but, seriously, if I want people to believe in my skills as a provider of SEO, then I had better rank pretty well in search results for terms like: “Palm Desert SEO Expert” or “Coachella Valley SEO Expert” – go ahead, click the links. I could have had you land on my page, but I linked to the results, instead. As long as I dominate search results for those terms, I can confidently say, I’m your local SEO expert.